With less than a week until the Glasgow 2019 European Athletics Indoor Championships, reigning champion Piotr Lisek from Poland is back at the top of the world lists after victory at the All Star Perche, a European Athletics Indoor Permit Meeting, on Sunday (24).
Two days after European champion Armand Duplantis from Sweden cleared a collegiate indoor record of 5.92m at the SEC Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Lisek inched the world lead up to 5.93m to defeat reigning world outdoor champion Sam Kendricks from the United States on countback.
Lisek has competed extensively this indoor season and he will arrive in Glasgow with five victories and three runner-up finishes from his eight competitions under his belt.
His chances are further embellished with Duplantis not competing in Glasgow and four-time champion Renaud Lavillenie, who is also the meeting director at the All-Star Perche, announcing his withdrawal on Friday due to a persistent hamstring injury.
Poland took gold and silver in Belgrade two years ago as former world champion Pawel Wojciechowski joined Lisek on the podium. Wojciechowski equalled his season’s best of 5.80m to finish fourth on countback ahead of Brazil’s Olympic champion Thiago Braz and Italy’s Claudio Stecchi.
For Stecchi, his 5.80m clearance represented another lifetime best and put him within two centimetres of Giuseppe Gibilisco long-standing national indoor record.
Sidorova and Bengtsson joint winners at 4.81m
Anzhelika Sidorova and Angelica Bengtsson shared victory in the women’s competition, both clearing 4.81m on their first attempts before three tries at 4.87m.
Sidorova is no stranger to surpassing the 4.80m mark - she holds the world lead at 4.91m from Madrid earlier this month - but for Bengtsson, her performance amounted to a sizeable breakthrough.
Bengtsson tied her lifetime best with a third time clearance at 4.73m before adding eight centimetres to her lifetime best with a first-time clearance at 4.81m to match Sidorova who didn’t notch up a blemish on her record until 4.87m.
Bengtsson also added six centimetres to the Swedish record which was set only a fortnight ago by Michaela Meijer - one of four national records set on the women’s side.
Ninon Guillon-Romarin and Alysha Newman were joint third at 4.73m with performance representing national indoor records for France and Canada respectively while Iryna Zhuk from Belarus set a national indoor record of 4.65m to finish fifth.